This week’s riff:
Having moved house recently, I have been in constant contact with BT about my phone and broadband service. After each conversation, the service agent has informed me that I’ll receive an email or text asking me to rank the service. On at least two occasions, the agent has also told me that if I’ve been satisfied with their help I should give a score of 9 or 10 on the survey.
Now, I’m more than conversant with the Net Promoter Score system for customer satisfaction. Where only a rating of 9 or 10 is good enough for a customer to be deemed to be a ‘promoter’ of that service. As a result, companies want to see as many scores of 9 and 10 as possible.
The service agent is effectively gaming the system by asking customers to falsely inflate their scores. They may even be rewarded on their overall rankings. I see the same approach, time and again, in the service departments of car dealerships.
Many of my clients tell me that their customer satisfaction scores are at a record high. It’s amazing how many companies claim to have higher levels of customer satisfaction than John Lewis!
The truth is that for too many organisations, the systems used to deliver the satisfaction statistics are neither robust nor reliable. Managers’ desire to hit high scores – and to receive their big bonuses for doing so. This overrides their concern to get reliable results that will actually give them the insights necessary to improve the customer experience.
How robust are the systems delivering your customer satisfaction results? And what steps do you need to take to ensure that your customers scores are reliable and insightful? Rather than simply higher than John Lewis’s?
Off The Record: Your Call Is Very Important To Us, Please Hold by Sparks
At first she said, “Your call is very important to us.”
And then she said, “Please hold, please hold.”
I’m getting mixed signals, mixed signals
© Stuart Cross 2017. All rights reserved.